


the darkest place i know

by kpkndy



Series: devil's resting place [1]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Other, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:50:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7274227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kpkndy/pseuds/kpkndy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>where did his faith go? when did he become like this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the darkest place i know

**Author's Note:**

> a childhood is often a pretty dark place.

(Cape Cod, 1985)  
  
Father is waiting by the car.  
  
Porters are moving Rafe’s luggage away from the summer home. Form his mother’s place. His parents are ‘divorcing’, he is told. He thinks this is what a divorce must be. Mother stays where she is, and Father prepares to wrench him from here, and this wonderful place.  
  
Here, there is the sea, and fisherman, and local children who play on the beachfronts. He can eat icecream on the sea front and watch Mother drink wine in the evenings and play her records. He looks up at her, his eight-year-old soul teeming with fear as she prepares him for a goodbye.  
  
She kneels before him and he can see the age in her face –her silver hair, and her eyes, wrinkled from smiling. One of his hands reaches out, and in the calmest way he can say it –in the most serious way, too, he coughs out, “I don’t want to go with him.”  
  
Mother squeezes his hand and nods with a vague look of concern on her face. “I know, Sweetheart.” She says. Her voice always sounds warm in that Texas way. “But I didn’t wanna lose the country house, or all of those shares –life’s just full a’ little concessions.”  
  
Concessions are not what he is used to. He doesn’t understand. The dark cloud of loss has never drifted into his skies. “I said I don’t want to go. I’m staying here.” He frowns hard at her, and tightens his grasp.  
  
Out by the car, Father has finished his phonecall and yells out to them. “Can we move this along? It’s going to be midday in Shanghai by the time we land.”  
  
Father’s voice startles him. The man is a terrifying sort –a cold, sneering look to his ferrety face, small but capable of seeming like the largest man in the room. At any rate, the thought of spending a week in Bismarck –wherever that is, in some cabin with just Father and a few lackeys is so downright awful to him that he clings harder to his mother and shakes his head again.  
  
“I said I’m staying here.” He declares with all the haughtiness a child can manage. “Tell him so.”  
  
His mother begins to rise, which is the first sign of loss. Of her getting further away, smaller and smaller to his eyes. “It doesn’t work like that, honey. This jus’ ain’t up for debate.”  
  
As he hears his father’s voice snapping from the car, he reaches for Mother’s hand again, but finds it gone. “Rafael!”  
  
Turning back into her, he feels a sudden sadness overwhelm him. It will be so awful to leave this place. To leave her. And yet, when he looks for her help –for her mercy; none can be found. “No.” He cries out. “Please!”  
  
Then, footsteps. A hand jerks him back by the collar despite all of his attempts to cling to Mother, who is inert to him, suddenly.  
  
Fearfully, he cries out to her. “Mother!”  But it is too late.  
  
Father spins him around, and smacks him across the face. The force of it is something awesome, the shock reverberating up and down the sides of his face, his ears throbbing and his teeth grinding together.  
  
Immediately, Rafe feels the compulsion to cry, and no sooner does he begin to sniff then another blow come to the other side of his face.  
  
Mother watches the whole thing. She doesn’t say a word. She could step in at any point and demand to have him back. To save him from Father’s wrath, and the dreadfulness that will no doubt be Bismarck.  
  
But she does nothing. She abandons him, there.  
  
“Now.” Father says, unexpectedly calm: a summer sky clearing after sudden thunder. “We don’t want to be late, do we?” That’s not a question that needs an answer. Rafe feels himself nod anyway. “Get in the car. I’ll be with you in a second.”  
  
So he goes.  
  
He does not look back at Mother.  
  
(Texas, 1990)  
  
The heat is intolerable.  
  
He sits barefoot on the wooden porch of their country house (one of many, bus his favourite.). He is barefoot, and a glass of ice tea sits on the wood besides him. Far from unoccupied –Rafe is listening.  
  
Inside, father’s new wife fans herself with knifelike movements, and he can hear her voice as they argue. Rafe knows his father is a terrifying man when he wants to be –in an incredible way that both delights and terrifies the boy. The man is not tall or broad at all, and yet, somehow, he seems to triple in size when he shouts. The room fills with nothing but him, and it seems to bring him great pleasure.  
  
Rafe listens out for it sometimes, trying to learn something. Usually, the shouting is reserved only for when his father is alone with his new wife, or at the penthouse in New York where they used to spend some of the fall.  
  
This house –their Texas retreat, is where no business is carried out. It is a haven, free of bureaucracy, where they are supposed to spend some weeks of summer getting to know one another before he heads off to Prep school.  
  
And while the shouting is a fascinating thing, Rafe can hear his father’s temper through the walls of the grand place, and wonders if he’d really like to get to know the man even remotely.  
  
He doesn’t want to get to know his father’s new wife, certainly. She is hardly ten years the boy’s senior, and father doesn’t seem to like her at all. Well –Rafe will be heading off to Deerfield Academy soon so he’s not naïve or a child anymore. He knows it’s about sex –or at least, the symbol of it. That’s what the help, say anyway.  
  
He likes to feel older like that –sophisticated. He knows there is supposed to be an appeal of women like that: young and feminine and thin, but finds himself bored whenever he finds himself alone with her –rare as that occasion is.  
  
A crash from indoors that sounds like glass startles him.  
  
He turns, looking at the open front door. He worries briefly that one of them may be storming out, but is relieved when the arguing continues. Father’s new wife sounds positively animalistic, hissing like an angry cat, and he thanks his stars he is not the one dealing with either of them. It is not something he much likes or knows how to do: accommodating for another and making room for their feelings.  
  
The last time that happened, one of the maids in the Washington townhouse started crying when Rafe accused her of stealing his old watch –a personal gift from father. She began to cry, and it was so awful that he had her sent away immediately.  
  
He found the watch, later, fallen behind the back of his dresser.  
  
One of the kitchen staff comes out onto the porch, then, suddenly. Likely avoiding the fray. The woman places a new jug of iced tea onto the porch table and takes the empty jug away. He is sick of iced tea, to be plain. He didn’t send for any more.  
  
But Rafe has been sat out here for two hours now –desperate to avoid the voidlike boredom of reading, but lonely, too.  
  
Of course, he doesn’t want to appear as if he’s really seeking the company of some _hired help_ , so he says, “I didn’t ask for any more tea.”  
  
The woman turns, a redheaded woman with a tight, annoyed-looking mouth that tugs to one side. “Sorry, sir.” Rafe doesn’t think she is very pretty. She walks back onto the porch and takes the full jug but it’s handle, and then makes to go again.  
  
Panicked, Rafe calls out, “I didn’t say for you to take it away.”  
  
Her mouth tugs more severely. She looks as if the words pain her as she says, “Sorry, sir.” again, placing the jug back onto the table. “Anything else, sir?”  
  
The flat affect of her voice indicates her displeasure of being near him, but she defers still. Parts of him wish that she wouldn’t –that she would talk to him in the way he hears the kitchen staff gossip together when they think nobody is listening: familiar, as equals.  
  
But she doesn’t. So he says, “Nothing. Get back to work.”  
  
(New York, 1992)  
  
Rafe is searching behind his dresser for his cufflinks.  
  
He is fifteen, and from down the hall he can hear his closest friend getting ready in the guest room with some music playing. They are going to some dinner with a host of other boys from Deerfield, but the place has a dress policy, understandably, and he cannot find his cufflinks anywhere.  
  
Rafe does not know if he has lost or dropped them somewhere. Yet, on his knees with a hand tapping blindly under the dresser, he comes up empty.  
  
The pair were sat there just that morning, in a box, open. The last gift Rafe’s mother gave him.  
  
It’s not that they are particularly nice, perish the thought, but he feels so distant from his mother. He has so rarely seen her since the divorce. Absurdly, the gift means more to him than his nice, more expensive pairs. It’s as if just wearing them makes him feel closer to her.  
  
Yet, they are nowhere to be seen.  
  
Confused, and a little irritated, he wanders out into the hall in his socks, his shirt untucked. Even if he has lost the cufflinks, he appreciates the opportunity to blame the loss on any of the house staff who have recently displeased him.  
  
He is thinking about one of the porters –a small, Romanian man that he is sure father’s wife is having an affair with, when one of the houskeepers appears at the end of the hall.  
  
Snapping his fingers, aware that the reservation is soon, Rafe calls out, “Hey –Lady!”  
  
She turns to him and nods, “Can I help you with something, sir?”  
  
He feels suddenly worse about the loss of the gift, and raises his voice to her. “I left a box of cufflinks on the dresser this morning and they’ve goddamn vanished.” He coughs out the words. “If they’re not found by tomorrow –at _latest_ , then certain staff might find themselves suddenly out of work.” He realises that by the end of the sentence he is shouting, and lets out a mirthless little laugh to indicate that everything is fine, for now. “I’m sure you get my point.”  
  
He turns back down the hall and goes to finish getting dressed for the dinner. He finds his jacket and drapes his bowtie around his shoulders, having no talent or skill for tying them, and retrieves his shoes from the closet floor.  
  
As he is sitting on the bed, his guest and closest friend, Nicholas, a boy in his year at Deerfield, comes in fully dressed. The other boy is an outstandingly handsome Latin type who always ties Rafe’s bowties for him. He comes in to see Rafe looking slightly undone and shakes his head.  
  
“We’re already running late.” He says, quickly. “Why aren’t you dressed?”  
  
Rafe finishes with his shoes and stands, a head shorter than Nicholas, but unthreatened by the other boy. “I couldn’t find my –my cufflinks, for God’s sake. They were on the dresser this morning, and now they’re--…”  
  
Nicholas’ hands are already coming up to Rafe’s collar to tie the knot in his bowtie, and he murmurs while he works. “You’re got other pairs you can put on in the car over there, right?”  
  
The practical suggestion is the wise one, but Rafe does not want to concede the point so easily. He is just as Father says he is –overly serious, hotheaded. “Sure, I’ve got others, but these ones were –they were special, alright?”  
  
The bowtie is done with, and Nicholas brushes down Rafe’s lapels in a comforting gesture. “It’s just jewellery, kid.” He says. He knows it drives Rafe mad to be called ‘kid’. “I’m sure they weren’t worth much.”  
  
They’re late anyway, and Rafe figures he can let this controversy lie unresolved for now. He nods, trying to convince himself. He doesn’t have many friends, and it would be senseless to argue with Nicholas about something so small.  
  
“Alright,” He concedes. “Head down to the car, and I’ll pick up a pair.”  
  
Nicholas nods. “Be quick about it, alright?” And he starts off down the hall towards the elevator.  
  
Constrained for time, Rafe searches his closet for another pair, and then once more under the dresser, and slips on a plain silver-plated pair. And, despite his lateness, he slips across the hall into the guest room, to briefly see if Nicholas has anything nicer to offer.  
  
He finds the other boy’s bag tucked out of sight under the bed and stuff his hand into it, bringing out some folded clothes and a wash bag and a hard box at the bottom. There’s something else in there as well –something cold and long, with odd curves to it.  
  
Curious, Rafe extricates whatever it is from the bottom of the bag, his wrist dipping with the weight of the thing.  
  
A candlestick?  
  
Not just any candlestick –the one missing from the dining room two days ago.  
  
It must be a mix-up, Rafe tells himself. He drops the candlestick onto the floor and takes a minute. Pointedly, he doesn’t look at the recovered candlestick, and shakes his head. How did --…how did this even get in here? Nicholas can’t care about some old sconce enough to try to steal it, can he..?  
  
Rafe lets out a quick breath and shakes his head again. A candlestick doesn’t matter anyway. It must be some kind of elaborate joke. Friends do that –they joke. It’s not theft. It can’t be.  
  
It doesn’t matter anyway. They’re late, and so he dips his hand into the bag again to find something more suitable for his wrists. So, he pulls out the hard box at the bottom to ease his mind, and opens it as soon as it’s free of the bag.  
  
God, he wishes he hadn’t.  
  
There they are. Solid silver, rectangular, with his birth date engraved neatly into the pair of them.  
  
Just jewellery, Nicholas had said. Probably worthless.  
  
(Switzerland, 1993)  
  
He falls mid-slope.  
  
A patch of ice or a stone or something knocks his left foot off course and then in a second, he’s face-first into the snow, feeling a snap reverberate through him and hearing nought but the crunch of bone.  
  
It’s an incredible feat –and not a place or time could have been better picked for his spectacular fall. It’s an inter-academy ski race, and all kinds of people are there for what suddenly feels like the sole purpose of witnessing his terrific injury .  
  
It’s not his first thought. He’d been barely focused, blind to the snowdrift in his eyes, hearing only the transitory cheer of the spectators and the loud rustle of the mountain wind until something knocked his errant heel a hair off course and now he’s tumbling at a speed so implausible it feels almost sublime.  
  
He feels himself trip, and then –cold. Somehow he’s still falling down the slope when he lands sideways, almost entirely on one knee. He doesn’t even get the luxury of that being it before the force throws his torso forward and his nose hits hard against the stiff, solid snow.  
  
God, he must black out momentarily because other competitors ski right on past, the speed and force of it spitting snowflakes at him in their wake. Of course, he comes to still face-down and continues to hear the wind and the spectators and the loudspeakers. It’s as if nobody notices the racer from Deerfield, prostrated in the snow, one leg at an impossible angle, unmoving.  
  
Eventually, of course, some of the resort stewards must arrive, because the next thing he is cognizant of is being turned onto his side. The ski of his good leg is stuck slightly in the snow. There’s a smattering of blood in the snow where he had fallen, and as he comes to he realises it is spilling slightly over the top of his lip and onto his cheek.  
  
It takes him time to come to the realization. All he can attend to is the pain of his leg.  
  
The same leg still encased inside of the leg of his ski pants, bent at an absurd angle.. He is helped slightly to sitting, staring at the worrisome look of the injury, masked by the winter clothes.  
  
That should be his primary concern –but his mind wins to his father, and how furious the man would be to hear that his only child couldn’t even finish competing. That Rafe would do him the personal disgrace of losing only by default. They’re not quitters –and that’s the essence of their legacy. It’s what forces him to try to stand, shakily.  
  
He’ll see it through to the end, he thinks, deliriously.  
  
But alas –no.  
  
Hands clamp on his arms and shoulders and lower him gently. One of the stewards draws aside and looks to be calling for medical help. Rafe looks over his shoulder dizzily at the spectators and the blur of other competitors, whizzing in the distance, tiny as specks of dust to him now. He cannot even make out the finish line, but he can’t –he can’t just quit.  
  
Prying a hand off of his shoulder, he exhales, “The race –I’ve got to--”  
  
More site staff are approaching. Rafe starts to feel claustrophobic, and irritated. Are they here to share in his shame? It’s not as if he has ever received a bit of assistance –so what are they here for? He tears another hand off of him and snarls, “I have to finish the--”  
  
One of the newcomers lays the gentlest touch to his left knee.  
  
Jesus, doesn’t that stop him for good.  
  
The pain is undeniable and it burns him, but he is too young and too removed from it –his head elsewhere in now-silly hopes of victory. He tries to pull away once more, still unable to admit defeat. “Would you--” He tries to skirt backwards. When his knee is examined again he nearly kicks out, screaming out slightly, hoarsely coughing, “Get your damn hands _off of me_! I have a race to--”  
  
The one examining his leg –the first aider or resort medic shakes his head, smiling a meaty smile as if deeply pleased. He clamps down on Rafe’s calf in warning and says, “You’re not finishing anything, kid.”  
  
“The _hell_ I am-”  
  
“Your knee is shattered.” Those words stop him short. Still huffing, indignantly, Rafe looks back at him, glad that the winter eyewear mostly obscured the sudden fear that spikes behind his eyes. “You won’t be able to walk on –and you won’t be skiing on an injury like that for at least six months.”  
  
Shock is a hell of a thing. Even more so than pride. Because it’s only after he hears the words that Rafe’s mind succumbs to reality, and suddenly realises the pain he has been in all along –the burn flaring all up his leg –the agony and weakness in the joint. He can’t even tense his leg without fireworks of anguish shooting up the limb.  
  
Six months?  
  
Rafe tries to shake his head, but doesn’t get far. More pressure around the joint –he cries out, trying to kick out with his ankle and be free.  
  
It seems to please the one examining him, who smiles in pleasure as others make way. There will be a medical crew there in a minute. Can’t they come sooner? Now he is aware of it, he can think of nothing but the pain, and dizzily, his head turns to look at the harsh drop of the slop and the vertigo that suddenly occurs to him.  
  
Deliriously, he digs his elbows into the snow and tries to move backwards again, hissing out, “But –but the ---regional finals…I –I have to--”  
  
Another hand on his ankle. Rafe is lousy with pain. He searches for the look of a medical type, for morphine or novocaine or something.  
  
“Make yourself at home, kid.” He hears somebody say. “You’re going to be in hospital for at least 3 weeks.”  
  
There is no time to fight it. He starts to feel the cold even more intensely, and drops his head back into the snow. He waits for somebody to come and administer painkillers. All the while, he thinks to himself desperately, _don’t send me home to New York –don’t send me home to Father like this._  
  
Kill me here, instead.  
  



End file.
